So, yet AGAIN, because of the 1998 antitrust suit, Microsoft started lobbying which allowed them to dominate the market via government regulation which led to the widespread domination of IE which... led to the 1998 antitrust suit which led to Microsoft lobbying...caused them to be more of a monopoly than when this process started

I have no clue why you keep adding that last part Joph. I never said that. The part I added in *is* what I've been saying, quite consistently, the whole **** time. I've seen you go off the rails before, but this kinda takes the cake.

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Edit: It seems that what you really want to do here is demand that no one say Microsoft was acting monopolistic (specifically in regards to internet browsers) prior to 1998.

Nope. As I've been saying all along, Microsoft became *more* monopolistic after it started lobbying than it was before. And that started because of the initial government anti-trust efforts. The point, since you seem to be unable to see more than a pinhole view of an issue at a time, is that this supports my argument that less government involvement in private business is usually better than more. Because in this case, the government got involved to deal with a company which was slightly abusing its market position and the result was a company now using government lobbying to massively abuse its market position.

It's relevant to my earlier point about there being two approaches to dealing with this sort of thing. Remember?

Well, really Microsoft's alleged monopoly didn't really last very long. Which sector is it that they have a monopoly in these days?

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publiusvarus wrote:

we all know liberals are well adjusted american citizens who only want what's best for society. While conservatives are evil money grubbing scum who only want to sh*t on the little man and rob the world of its resources.

Given that Gbaji's question was to name a business where the federal government acted to break up or prevent a monopoly, I'd say it applies. It's safe to say that they are no longer abusing the Windows platform to push people into using IE.

Your initial question was to name a business where the government acted to end or prevent a monopoly. Can we safely say that Microsoft does not have a monopoly on internet browsers today? I'm not claiming the suit was the sole reason for this but the government did, in fact, act to prevent a monopoly on Microsoft's part in the browser market?

Absolutely false. Microsoft has just as much of a monopoly in the browser market as it had back in 1998. It still bundles IE within its OS exactly as it did back then. If you don't see MS as having a monopoly today it's because... wait for it... it didn't have a monopoly back then either. Remember, the entire justification for the claim of that anti-trust lawsuit was that MS bundling their browser with their OS represented an unfair use of one product it controlled large market share with to give itself an unfair advantage with another product. Yet, as you even sorta admit, the government's action with regard to that suit didn't actually change that practice. So the degree to which we don't view MS's bundling of IE within the windows operating system as an anti-trust violation today is pure perception. The reality hasn't changed. And that reality is that despite bundling IE within its operating system, other browsers have managed to stay on the market and succeed.

So the government action wasn't necessary to prevent an abuse within the market, was it? Whether we still define MS's control of the OS as a monopoly or not isn't really the question. It's whether MS's use of that was abusive and actually gave it an insurmountable advantage. Clearly, it didn't. But what that government's action did do was force MS to start lobbying as part of its business model. And once it did that, it did start actually manipulating laws (like SOX) to its advantage and to the disadvantage of its customers.

Hence, why MS is a good example of what I'm talking about here. It shows how government attempting to regulate the market ended out making things worse instead of better. Get it yet?

Given that Gbaji's question was to name a business where the federal government acted to break up or prevent a monopoly, I'd say it applies. It's safe to say that they are no longer abusing the Windows platform to push people into using IE.

No. My question was to name a business which became a monopoly *without* government involvement/help. While we can debate whether MS was really ever a monopoly when it comes to pushing IE on people (since that problem was "solved" by the free market and not government), we can absolutely say that since it started lobbying the government, it's expanded its monopolistic tendencies into other much more customer harmful areas.

Do you even know how much impact SOX has had in terms of effectively forcing corporations to use MS products in a bunch of ways that they didn't before? Messaging and the AD security model have become almost necessary to maintain in order to meet the security requirements in that regulation (and I use the term "security" loosely). That in turn forces companies to buy user licenses for a much larger percentage of their employee base than they would have otherwise. MS basically used its lobbying to get the government to create regulations in order to force customers to buy more copies of its software.

And that's *exactly* the sort of public/private corruption which started this sub-thread. It's arguably much worse than anything a free market monopoly could accomplish.

Ahhh... "slightly abusing". You know, in the way which leads to a federal lawsuit.

A federal lawsuit brought about by lobbying from their competitors. How many MS customers do you think were complaining that IE came bundled "free" with windows Joph? While I'm far from a MS supporter, much of the complaints in that time frame were trumped up in terms of actual effect. Did you read the second link I provided? Every company bundled their own free browser with their OS. IBM did it in OS/2. Sun did it with Solaris. HP did it. Apple did it. Yet it's a violation of anti-trust law for Microsoft to do it?

And, as it turned out, the anti-trust suit wasn't needed. So how much of a problem was MS's monopoly?

Well, really Microsoft's alleged monopoly didn't really last very long. Which sector is it that they have a monopoly in these days?

As Gbaji pointed out, a lot of federal regulations lend themselves to stuff that Microsoft has available on their servers - security features, etc. So Microsoft has a fairly solid lock on enterprise server operating systems for smaller to midsize businesses. IBM and Oracle(Solaris) duke it out over the big data centers and Linux is the el cheapo alternative for universities and very tiny businesses and larger website based businesses. But Microsoft has a pretty solid lock on stuff like hospitals, where the EHR software will only run on a Windows server.

Really, though, that's more because the ERP solutions are only programmed to run on Windows, not that Windows forces ERP solutions to write exclusively for them. The companies that make them could totally code them to run on Linux too, if they wanted to do twice the work for twice the money.

____________________________

FFXI: Catwho on Bismarck: Retired December 2014

Thayos wrote:

I can't understand anyone who skips the cutscenes of a Final Fantasy game. That's like going to Texas and not getting barbecue.

Here's a neat test: Quick! Think of a monopoly. Baring that, think of a company which we have to regulate to prevent becoming a monopoly (or had to in the past). Got one? Got five? Write the name(s) down.

Absolutely false. Microsoft has just as much of a monopoly in the browser market as it had back in 1998.

At its height (before the lawsuit was settled with the Bush justice department, IE had a 95% share. Today, it's about 25%. You must be using some of that conservative math the Heritage Foundation uses

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No. My question was to name a business which became a monopoly *without* government involvement/help

I'm not sure why you bother lying about things you wrote a page ago.

What you REALLY wrote:

Here's a neat test: Quick! Think of a monopoly. Baring that, think of a company which we have to regulate to prevent becoming a monopoly (or had to in the past). Got one? Got five? Write the name(s) down.

Now... Did that company operate in a way which required government licensing, land use, application of eminent domain on their behalf, etc?

Was Microsoft's browser business a monopoly? Yes. At least according to the people whose job it is to monitor those activities which matters more to me than the desperate ramblings of an "expert" losing an argument about his own field. Did the government act to prevent this monopoly? Yes. Was this browser monopoly the result of government regulation prior to the fact? As you keep pointing out for me (thanks!), no.

Absolutely false. Microsoft has just as much of a monopoly in the browser market as it had back in 1998.

At its height (before the lawsuit was settled with the Bush justice department, IE had a 95% share. Today, it's about 25%. You must be using some of that conservative math the Heritage Foundation uses

No. I know that market share is only half of what might make something a monopoly. The absence of the ability to control prices and ensure lack of competition means that MS didn't actually have a monopoly on desktop browsers back then. If they had they would not have lost so much market share over the next decade, would they? And, as you've admitted, the governments actions with their much vaunted anti-trust suit didn't have a **** thing to do with it.

The free market prevailed. Simple as that.

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No. My question was to name a business which became a monopoly *without* government involvement/help

I'm not sure why you bother lying about things you wrote a page ago.

I'm not sure what happened to your reading comprehension.

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Now... Did that company operate in a way which required government licensing, land use, application of eminent domain on their behalf, etc?

Should have been obvious that the point I was making is that it's nearly impossible to find examples of actual real monopolies in which the government was not involved in creating or maintaining said monopoly. That's why I asked you to think of a monopoly and then think about whether it used government help to achieve it. What did you think I was asking that series of questions for?

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Was Microsoft's browser business a monopoly? Yes.

No. It wasn't. I know you don't want to hear this, but it wasn't.

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At least according to the people whose job it is to monitor those activities which matters more to me than the desperate ramblings of an "expert" losing an argument about his own field.

Which is kinda meaningless when the entire point of my argument is to say that "those people whose job it is to monitor those activities" are the ones who engaged in the sort of public/private corruption in the first place. They are more interested in making sure that large corporations pay their protection money to the government than whether they actually have an unfair advantage in the marketplace. So forgive me if the DOJ deciding that MS's browser bundling represented a violation of anti-trust laws doesn't impress me as much as it does you.

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Did the government act to prevent this monopoly? Yes.

No, it didn't! And you **** well know it. After nearly 4 years of action, the government basically slapped MS on the wrist and did *nothing* to prevent the very thing they claimed was in violation in the first place (bundling of IE into the Windows OS). Have you purchased a copy of Windows lately? Have you noticed that it still comes bundled with IE?

The government's actions accomplished only one thing: It forced MS to start giving money to politicians in order to avoid getting sued by the DoJ any more. And in the process, it gave MS the power to engage in actual corrupt business practices in the form of effectively writing the server security regulations in a way which benefited their business.

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Was this browser monopoly the result of government regulation prior to the fact? As you keep pointing out for me (thanks!), no.

And? Of course it wasn't. You're missing the point. MS uses more abusive business tactics *since* that lawsuit than they did before. Prior to that point, their marketing strategy was aggressive and it hurt their competitors, but it largely benefited their consumers. Since that point, their strategy has shifted into exactly the sorts of price controls and forced consumption which usually defines something as a monopoly. I think you really just don't understand how directly the government regulations effectively force businesses to use MS products.

That was never the case before the government decided to get involved. Again, this ties back to my original point which is whether it's better to get more or less government regulation as a means of dealing with unfair/corrupt business practices. Clearly, the answer should be "less government".

Awww, gbaji's getting angry. Apparently he doesn't like when you call him on switching directions and then claiming that's the way he's been going all along, Joph.

The result of the case against Microsoft were requirements on them designed to specifically combat their domination of the browser market, by sharing their API with third party companies. If you are honestly going to sit there and pretend that this wasn't incredibly important for the eventual development of Firefox, Chrome, and Safari, then you are a fool. Furthermore, they are now unable to sabotage other browser developers by breaking (or otherwise interfering with the operation of) competing browsers. This ensures an open market for them, since they don't use subscriptions anymore.

Awww, gbaji's getting angry. Apparently he doesn't like when you call him on switching directions and then claiming that's the way he's been going all along, Joph.

That would sting a lot more if it wasn't for the fact that anyone with a greater than 2nd grade reading level could clearly see that I was attempting to get people to name monopolies and then show them that those monopolies existed/grew/thrived/whatever because of government action and not because of an absence of it. Clearly that has been the case even with MS, right? Their business practices have gotten more abusive since that lawsuit, not less.

And MS is probably the best case argument for a big monopolistic company arising with a minimum of government intervention. They're the rare case of a company getting that big in an industry before the government shows up to make them "play ball". But feel free to continue to believe that the government helped us out in this case. Cause that's hysterical from where I'm sitting.

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The result of the case against Microsoft were requirements on them designed to specifically combat their domination of the browser market, by sharing their API with third party companies.

Microsoft already shared its API with third party companies. It had been doing that for nearly a decade before the ruling (since the Windows3x days really). How the **** do you think anyone ever wrote any code which ran in Windows in the first place? Requiring them to do something they already did may look good on paper, but it really had no effect at all.

What MS has always been in the practice of doing, however, is changing its API(s) periodically and in ways which their own internal software development methodology could take advantage of, while leaving competitors having to scramble to write a patch to make their competing software work. Um... I hate to tell this to you, but MS still does that today. It never stopped doing this. People just got better at updating their competing code (largely a result of a move away from big corp competition to the various opensource methods). It had nothing to do with the judgment in that suit.

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If you are honestly going to sit there and pretend that this wasn't incredibly important for the eventual development of Firefox, Chrome, and Safari, then you are a fool.

Somehow I'm not shaking in my boots over you calling me a fool when I know literally 200 times more about this subject than you do. I'm not "pretending" that the MS ruling had nothing to do with the rise of those other browsers, I know that it had nothing to do with it. What had the most to do with the rise of those browsers was the shift from a "competing company" model, to a "open software" model. You can't compete with MS head on. No one could. And the judgment didn't change that. You work around MS's model by not playing their game.

Why do you suppose that pretty much every direct competitor to MS has disappeared from the computer market *since* that ruling? What has replaced them is a host of smaller companies distributing builds of open software, which collectively can compete with MS (sorta). The original competitors have all had to move into other niche markets to stay solvent.

When was the last time you actually paid for a browser? Think about that.

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Furthermore, they are now unable to sabotage other browser developers by breaking (or otherwise interfering with the operation of) competing browsers. This ensures an open market for them, since they don't use subscriptions anymore.

Nah. They still do that. Never stopped doing that. What happened was that while a traditionally modeled company could not make adjustments to changes in Windows fast enough to keep their products working, the open software devs can do it within hours of any change. You may have missed it, but there was a bit of a battle in the mid 2000s, with MS releasing changes regularly with the same "break everyone else" result, but it didn't work. MS realized that it cost it too much money to keep making changes, when some guy sitting in his bedroom slippers could release code to "fix" their adjustment immediately afterwards. MS can't compete against "free", so it stopped trying.

Again though, that didn't have anything to do with the lawsuit. Had the government's actions actually limited MS's power to control the market, they'd still have actual real competition today. But they really don't. Not in the context of earning money and market share they don't.

Again though, that didn't have anything to do with the lawsuit. Had the government's actions actually limited MS's power to control the market, they'd still have actual real competition today. But they really don't. Not in the context of earning money and market share they don't.

Edited, Dec 1st 2011 7:32pm by gbaji

Pre US vs MS, IE had about 85% of the browser market, now it has about 20%

Yeah, I've hit the point of satisfactorily showing to everyone else that Gbaji is wrong and not being worried about Gbaji never admitting that he's wrong.

I am, again, laughing at Gbaji proclaiming that he knows "literally 200 times more about this subject" as he stomps his feet and insists that every researcher who says something that doesn't fit his ideology is wrong and is just a scare-quote "expert"

In his last two posts, he tells us that everyone working in the FTC & Dept of Justice were all lying McLiarfaces just out to make a buck and can't be trusted. But Gbaji knows "literally 200 times more about this subject" than anyone else here so we need to listen to him.

Theophany wrote:YOU'RE AN ELITIST @#%^ AETHIEN, NO WONDER YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS AND PEOPLE HATE YOU. someproteinguy wrote:Aethien you take more terrible pictures than a Japanese tourist. Astarin wrote:One day, Maz, you'll learn not to click on anything Aeth links.

Had the government's actions actually limited MS's power to control the market, they'd still have actual real competition today. But they really don't. Not in the context of earning money and market share they don't.

Microsoft is in one of its worst positions possibly in its entire history and somehow they don't have any actual competition? Would you kindly define "actual competition", please? You clearly don't believe open source software counts in any form, so what does, exactly?

Had the government's actions actually limited MS's power to control the market, they'd still have actual real competition today. But they really don't. Not in the context of earning money and market share they don't.

Microsoft is in one of its worst positions possibly in its entire history and somehow they don't have any actual competition? Would you kindly define "actual competition", please? You clearly don't believe open source software counts in any form, so what does, exactly?

There's some irony when you post this right after a slew of attacks on me criticizing people's reading comprehension.

Not in the context of earning money and market share they don't.

In the mid 90s, there were a half dozen large corporations producing operating systems and applications software for numerous computer uses to run on several different computer platforms. Today, there are basically three. And one of them (Sun Microsystems) was bought by Oracle (a database/applications company in case you're confused) and likely within the next few years will be relegated to appliance systems (specialized systems not used for general computing). The second is Apple, which has been moving away from the core computing industry (was never more than a niche to begin with) for most of the last decade and moving also into specialty gadgets (iphone, ipad, etc).

You can't seriously be arguing that the various open and near-open software vendors out there are actually competing with MS in terms of market profitability. They make enough money to keep their doors open and manage it largely because there's a huge number of people basically helping them write their software for free. And in return, they charge minimal amounts of money bundling said "free" software into distributions. Charging for the building, testing, and support, but not even in the remote neighborhood of what MS earns selling its products.

In the world of "making money selling computer stuff", about the only area MS doesn't dominate today is EDA tools. It has vastly greater "market share" today than it did back then. And, as I pointed out already, but some are still confused over, total relative volume of a market is only half of what makes something a monopoly. It's the ability to control the market and *force* customers to buy your product that does. MS wasn't doing that back in the 90s with the browsers. It absolutely is doing that today with messaging and domain space authentication systems. I work for a company which lost a multi-million dollar lawsuit solely (and I'm not making this up) because "you don't use MS exchange to handle your email, so we don't have this trusted data fingerprint showing when you sent various notices and responses". Let's ignore the fact that no one in the history of legal documentation had *ever* had this or needed it, the law is basically giving MS a monopoly.

Want to know where every corporation is going (has already gone) with regards to internal web authentication? MS domain certs. Why? Because SOX rules require an authentication model exactly like the one that MS built with its domain system. Never mind that it's no more secure than other models, that's the one the law mandates, so they win. So no more apache servers using the much more secure kerberos methodology. Nope. Everyone has to authenticate themselves to a windows domain server, else you get slapped with a fine (or have your stock downgraded).

And lets not get me started on servers having to have virus scanning software installed and kept up to date. Seriously. Think about that for a moment and see how absurd it gets when you're trying to explain to a SOX auditor why your server doesn't have virus scanning installed (cause it's not a windows box and thus doesn't *need* a virus scanner). It's become the circus of the freaking absurd in the IT world, and MS and government regulations are absolutely at the center of it.

Sure, windows has competition for the hobbyist (who certainly have more options today than they used to). But they aren't where the money is. They exist because they're under the radar and aren't big enough money targets to go after. It's laughable to anyone who works at a high level in the IT field to have someone try to insist that MS has less influence today than they had say 10 years ago. I've watched as MS has systematically used its leverage in the market and in the government regulations to force companies to buy their products. And I can tell you first hand that it's not because of "free" bundling, or even API changing. It's because of their influence with regulators.

Well, speaking of here in B.C. median incomes for younger people have actually declined since 1976 and the cost of housing has gone up by 149%

That's with more households being DUAL income, rather than single income, as well.

So, I can see why Canada has an occupy movement. And we haven't even started talking about student loans/the cost of education/ the need to get an education to have a decent job yet.

Source:

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GENERATION SQUEEZE: THE DECLINE IN THE STANDARD OF LIVING

In 1976, average housing costs were less than three times the average household income for couples age 25-34 in B.C.. Today, housing costs more than seven times household income for this age group (Figures 1 & 2).

This increase reflects that housing prices rose 149 percent in B.C. since 1976, while young couples’ household income dropped by 6 percent over the same period. No other province in Canada reports a decrease in the average young couples household income. Nor does any other province report as large an increase in the cost of housing as does B.C. Together, these trends reveal that the standard of living for the generation raising kids has deteriorated more in B.C. than any other part of the country.

Household incomes are stalled even though the proportion of young women who contribute to household income is up 42 percent compared to the mid-1970s, while participation among young men has remained relatively constant.

While B.C. is by far the worst in terms of growing inequality (especially for younger people) it is not by any stretch of the imagination unique in Canada for making life tougher on ordinary folks. Housing costs across Canada have skyrocketed while wages have remained largely stagnant. University/Technical Training is required to get the kind of salaries people used to get without even finishing high school - and it is more expensive than ever as well - and our student loans are practically extortion with the interest rates on them.

So I can totally understand why Canada has an occupy movement. Who gives a **** if Canadian corps are making more than ever, when that increased wealth isn't making its way to ordinary citizens?

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lolgaxe wrote:

When it comes to sitting around not doing anything for long periods of time, only being active for short windows, and marginal changes and sidegrades I'd say FFXI players were the perfect choice for politicians.

And that's just the valuation of the investment value of the company, which doesn't tell us anything about how much influence the company has in a given market area. And that's also ignoring the key point I made earlier which was that Apple has largely stepped out of the computer market. Aside from laptops, who owns an apple computer? They make handheld devices, not really computers anymore. And no one has *ever* run a network on Apple servers (ok, someone might have, but not for very long). Um... Google doesn't make computers either, so I'm not sure why you included it in the list. Could have tossed Ford in there if you wanted and it would have almost as much relevance to this subject.

Gbaji... your own quote is talking about SOFTWARE not HARDWARE or do you not know the difference?

Gibberish Boy wrote:

You can't seriously be arguing that the various open and near-open software vendors out there are actually competing with MS in terms of market profitability.

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lolgaxe wrote:

When it comes to sitting around not doing anything for long periods of time, only being active for short windows, and marginal changes and sidegrades I'd say FFXI players were the perfect choice for politicians.

Gbaji... your own quote is talking about SOFTWARE not HARDWARE or do you not know the difference?

Gibberish Boy wrote:

You can't seriously be arguing that the various open and near-open software vendors out there are actually competing with MS in terms of market profitability.

Um... I wrote it. Somewhat by definition then I know what the **** I was talking about better than you do. I was talking about competing operating systems. Specifically, linux distributions like suse, redhat, debian, ubuntu, etc. Keep your eye on the ball. We're talking about a monopoly. Which means you're using your market power to force people to purchase your product. Microsoft's objective has always been to own the core operating system your applications run on. Its interest in the applications market has always been to this end.

I wasn't talking about hardware, and I'm not sure why you thought I was. Microsoft doesn't make the hardware. Apple does, but it has stopped even trying to compete in the computer market with MS. Even other vendors who build operating systems for IBM based hardware don't really compete (except in one area, which I mentioned earlier). MS has used government regulations to force a whole host of server applications to be run on MS software, which in turn requires MS operating systems to run, and often *also* requires MS operating system clients to properly/fully utilize.

As I said earlier, MS is far far more of a monopoly in the computer market today than it was back in the mid 90s. ****, it's a lot moreso today than it was in the early 2000s.

Yes and which of those 3 companies has been moving backwards all year long?

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And that's just the valuation of the investment value of the company, which doesn't tell us anything about how much influence the company has in a given market area. And that's also ignoring the key point I made earlier which was that Apple has largely stepped out of the computer market. Aside from laptops, who owns an apple computer? They make handheld devices, not really computers anymore. And no one has *ever* run a network on Apple servers (ok, someone might have, but not for very long). Um... Google doesn't make computers either, so I'm not sure why you included it in the list. Could have tossed Ford in there if you wanted and it would have almost as much relevance to this subject.

Considering you said nothing about hardware (to be fair I have never owned a PC made by microsoft either but Ill pretend that they are on the cutting edge of hardware design to humor you). Your point was that no company competes with microsoft in its market. Presently google apple and microsoft all provide operating systems for various things, the fact that google and apple seem focused on handheld devices is a meaningless grasp at saving face. If anything it displays even more just how far microsofts grip on the software side of computing has fallen. Handhelds are a virtually new market, established primarily by apple although the market is made up of mostly android devices. There are dozens of systems running Googles Android, the most popular system uses apples IOS, and bringing up the rear is Microsoft. (well to be fair BlackBerry is bringing up the rear but since they have announced moving to android they aren't even a market contender anymore software wise.)

Microsoft is not in any monopoly position at all, if anything they have been losing their hold in the market of computing for sometime now, as evidenced by their reversing stock index, people are jumping ship because Microsoft is not the money maker it once was, and unless they come out with something revolutionary (like they did in the late 80's early 90's) then they will continue to back pedal as Apple and Google fight over new markets.

Um... I wrote it. Somewhat by definition then I know what the **** I was talking about better than you do. I was talking about competing operating systems.

It's true. He knows it 200x better than us.

Even though we were discussing a monopoly based on browsers, not OSs.

Wow... Just wow. You don't know what the whole browser thing was about, do you? I'll give you a hint: The browser being used was the means to an end, not the end itself. It was about bundling a browser into their OS (which was at that time and still is today the most popular home desktop OS), which would maximize the number of people using that browser. Then they'd add "features" into that browser that allowed it to interact with "features" that their web server software provided. Thus, to view a web page served by said server (or even just designed using MS apps), you *had* to use their browser. Which *had* to run on their OS. Do you know what IIS is/was?

It was then, and has always been about controlling the operating system. All the applications stuff MS does is to keep (and extend) their control of the OS market. And they have been vastly more successful at this *since* the anti-trust lawsuit than they were before. The government didn't prevent MS from using its market control to influence the market in unfair ways. What it did was force MS to use government regulations to do it (cut the government in for a piece of the pie essentially).

What the DoJ did in the late 90s with MS is far far more like a mob shaking a business down for protection money than a government enforcing laws.

Yes and which of those 3 companies has been moving backwards all year long?

Huh? Who cares? Both MS and Google have been pretty flat for the last 5 years. Apple's gained a lot of value (the whole ipod, iphone, ipad, stuff really helped). I'm not sure what your point is. Apple's gains in the market have nothing to do with MS's control over the computer operating system market.

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Considering you said nothing about hardware (to be fair I have never owned a PC made by microsoft either but Ill pretend that they are on the cutting edge of hardware design to humor you).

You're correct. I said nothing about hardware. Which is why I'm mystified as to why you're the second person to bring up hardware.

Apple moved from the operating system to hardware appliances only. MS didn't. Want to know why? Because it *won* the operating system war. The only computer hardware on which Apple's operating system is still commonly used are some models of laptops. Windows is used on everything else. Apple moved its model to making phones and music players and handheld doodads.

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Your point was that no company competes with microsoft in its market.

Yes. Operating systems for full computers and for the servers at the back end.

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Presently google apple and microsoft all provide operating systems for various things, the fact that google and apple seem focused on handheld devices is a meaningless grasp at saving face.

No, it's not. Those are outside the market in which MS has its influence. I'm not sure what you think you're trying to say here. MS doesn't have a monopoly on car manufacturing either, but that doesn't mean that it has less of a monopoly today in the areas it was most monopolistic back in the 90s. Which was exactly the point I was making.

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If anything it displays even more just how far microsofts grip on the software side of computing has fallen. Handhelds are a virtually new market, established primarily by google. There are dozens of systems running Googles Android, the most popular system uses apples IOS, and bringing up the rear is Microsoft. (well to be fair BlackBerry is bringing up the rear but since they have announced moving to android they aren't even a market contender anymore software wise.)

Yeah. I know you guys like to make fun of this, but I really do know more about this than you do.

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Microsoft is not in any monopoly position at all, if anything they have been losing their hold in the market of computing for sometime now, as evidenced by their reversing stock index, people are jumping ship because Microsoft is not the money maker it once was, and unless they come out with something revolutionary (like they did in the late 80's early 90's) then they will continue to back pedal as Apple and Google fight over new markets.

That's the point. They are "new markets". And at the risk of sounding like a broken record, MS's main interest in being in those markets at all is to ensure that the standards which result benefit the market they care about the most. They want to make sure that the web server you download your apps from runs on a windows system (or has some form of windows license involved). I think you really don't understand how companies make money in this space. It's not always about the customer facing application. That's what *you* see, but that's not all there is. It's the guy who's positioned himself to make that app run on his software, or use his API, and thus gets a piece of every dime spent in some area which he didn't have to invest a lot of effort getting into.

I really think most of you honestly don't understand this. MS didn't win the browser wars because they got everyone to use IE. They won because they forced a change to the browser standards which favored their market model and their licensing methodology, and ensured that they'd get a piece of everyone else's business. MS was a bit late getting into the handheld market, but you can bet that they are already using their existing leverage (and some help from big government) to do the same thing with that area. They don't have to make you buy a MS run phone, or tablet, or player. That's not their objective at all.